Monthly Archives: March 2015

Back when I started my career in SEO, content marketing didn’t exist—at least not in the way it exists now.

We used strategies to boost traction and traffic to websites through the creation of great content—it was content marketing before the term even existed. And it worked.

I’ve carried the lessons with me ever since. And I’d love to share them all with you— everything I’ve used to successfully help hundreds of companies benefit from content marketing over the past five years.

Here are 37+ tips and resources you can use to build a fine-tuned content marketing machine from the ground up.

The Key Concepts of Content Marketing

In 2009, I founded a company called Single Grain. It started as a part-time consulting gig but very quickly grew into a powerhouse digital marketing agency. In the early years, we were successful because we were able to help businesses of all sizes–including a few Fortune 500 companies—gain more traction online by implementing what we referred to then as link-building strategies.

In a perfect world, we could all take amazing photos, edit them scrupulously, and somehow manage to have enough props and stylish flair to snap the exact image you need to illustrate your post. In the real world, we have access to other talented people who do that instead!

I’ve lost count of the posts I’ve pinned, sent to Evernote, or emailed to myself that round up great places to find free images on the internet. To save myself that headache (and hopefully you too!) here they all are, finally, in one place. Pin it for yourself!

This article first appeared on Mention on February 6, 2015 Written by: Sujan Patel

A recent study shows that 86 percent of all B2B marketers use content marketing strategies to gain exposure and ultimately generate revenue, but only 38 percent believe they are effective at it. Testing a few different tools and strategies allows you to figure out what works best for your organization.

I’ve been lucky enough to try a lot of different tools. Below are some of my favourite content promotion tools and resources that can help get you off on the right foot.

5 best content promotion tools

There are a number of tools you can use to promote your content and connect with more audiences. Here are five of my favourites:

This platform allows you to track your content’s performance online, as well as your competitors’. You can use the dashboard to track specific URLs and how their content performs over time. Buzzsumo also allows users to set alerts for specific keyboards, authors, or URLs. The platform is easy to use and fairly straightforward, which makes it a good platform for any marketer or writer.

Cost: Free version with limited uses. Premium versions from $99 for a single account to $499+ for an enterprise account.

This tool integrates with your WordPress blog and allows you to see your calendar for social media and blogging content, all in one place. CoSchedule also lets you communicate with your team, set tasks and guidelines, and make editorial planning as easy as possible. Having this is all in one place can help make your promotional strategy more effective.

Cost: $10 per month, per blog. Unlimited users and social media accounts.

Mention allows you to monitor what others are saying about you online. It tracks mentions across 42 languages and multiple platforms, including social media, forums, websites, and more. You can also generate analytics reports of the mentions, which make it extremely effective for sharing with clients or among colleagues. Knowing what gets talked about most online can help you craft future content.

Cost: From $29 for three users, three alerts, and 3,000 mentions to $299+ for a company account.

This tool allows you to see who has been linking to your content. It also allows you to view that information for any URL. According to Neil Patel of KISSmetrics, this SEO tool is genius for promoting your content. You can look at who is sharing content from popular blogs and target them with your content. Share your content with them on social media; reach out for an interview for your site; and comment on their own content in order to get to know them.

Cost: Free to use for a few number of searches per day; $99-$599 monthly for various levels that also include access to the entire Moz Pro toolset.

Zemeta is a content distribution network that focuses on the premise that content is more engaging than banner or text ads. They work with content sharing networks such as Outbrain, AOL, and Yahoo! to share your content across external platforms that may have much higher audiences and networks to increase your content’s visibility.

I have just received this from Kim so I thought I would share it with you.

Running out of things to say on Twitter? Join the club! It can be hard to constantly come up with new and interesting things to tweet. This article will give you 50 tweet ideas for when you have brain freeze. I hope this helps to make sure you never again run out of stuff to say on Twitter!

Participate in Follow Friday (Use #FollowFriday)

Recommend one of your favorite businesses or tools

Link to a new post on your blog

Share a random fact about your business or ask for a random fact about your followers

@mention an influencer in one of your tweets (great for getting noticed!)

Ask your followers for help, or retweet someone else’s request for help

Despite the spattering of headlines that have popped up over the past couple years proclaiming “infographics are dead,” infographics are, in fact, alive and well.

We just checked — they’re totally healthy. I mean, there are a lot of them, but when marketers spend the time aligning the topic, content, and style of their infographics with the needs and preferences of their target audiences, they’re still finding success. (And by “success” I mean driving traffic — and potential leads — to their websites and generating social buzz through people sharing and commenting.)

A 2014 study shows that the use of infographics among B2B marketers increased 9% from 2013 to 2014: from 43% adoption to 52% adoption. And a recent report from Social Media Examiner shows that original, visual content is the number one form of content that marketers want to learn more about in 2015.

But how can those who don’t necessarily have a design background — or the budget to commission an agency, hire a dedicated in-house designer, or purchase expensive design software — create professional-looking infographics that are able to captivate their audiences?

We’re so glad you asked! Here’s a little secret: You can do it using the software you probably already have installed on your computer. That’s right! PowerPoint can be your best friend when it comes to visual content creation.

And in this post, we’ll highlight five of the infographic templates from the download and teach you some PowerPoint infographic creation basics along the way. Just be sure todownload the PowerPoint templates for yourself so you can easily customize the designs you see below!

5 Infographics That Teach You How to Create Infographics

1) How to Create an Infographic Filled With Data

Infographics and data visualization are the peanut butter and jelly of the visual content world.

When you have new data to reveal to the world, you can use an infographic to display that data as part of a cohesive, visual narrative. And that’s exactly what the “Data Geek” template is for.

The Data Geek Template

We’ve loaded this template with a variety of different charts and graphs, which you can easily update with your own data. (Just right click on a graph, choose “Edit Data,” and you’ll be able to customize the values in an Excel spreadsheet.)

Not sure which types of graphs to use for your different data sets? Here are some best practices to keep in mind:

Column chart: Use for comparing different categories or for showing changes over time (from left to right).

Pie chart: Use for making part-to-whole comparisons. (Note: They work best with small data sets.)

Line graph: Use for showing data that changes continuously over time. Ideal for displaying volatility, trends, acceleration, or deceleration.

Doughnut chart: Use like a pie chart. This stylistic variation allows you to put a number, graphic, or other visual in the center of the chart.

Bar chart: Use like a column chart. (The horizontal bars make it easier to display long category names.)

2) How to Make a Timeline Infographic

Telling the history of a particular industry, product, brand, trend, or tactic can be a great topic for an infographic. And while there are a variety of different ways that you can visualize time — including in a circle, which is what we did with our Google algorithm updates infographic — the timeline is by far the most common and easiest design method to use.

To tell your story with our timeline infographic template below, update the time periods in the center circles, replace the placeholder text, and adjust the visuals and colors to your liking. For those latter adjustments, you can choose “Insert” > “Shape in PowerPoint” to add in different visuals, and use the paint bucket (a.k.a. “color fill”) icon to change the colors of different elements.

The Timeline Template

Want to make sure your timeline infographic hits all the right notes? Here are some tips to consider:

Research. Research. Research. The best timeline infographics aren’t just beautifully designed — they also tell a great story based on extensive research. So before you start the design phase of your infographic, put in the time to surface the best information possible.

Narrow the scope: Timelines that cover hundreds or thousands of years can certainly be interesting, but they can also require weeks or months of research. To keep your sanity, stick with shorter time periods.

Keep your copy concise: Infographics are supposed to be visual. If you find yourself writing 100+ words for each date on your timeline, a blog post may be the better content format.

3) How to Design a Totally Hip Infographic

Ok, so “hipness” is definitely in the eye of the beholder. But for this infographic template we wanted to do something that reflected modern design trends, including using banners and arrows.

In terms of content, we provided plenty of space for both stats and copy. There’s also a column chart at the bottom. But remember, you can always add different charts and graphs to the template wherever you see fit. Just select “Insert” > “Chart …” and you’ll have several options to choose from.

The Hipster Template

To make sure your end result is as hip as possible, here are some design tips to follow:

Experiment with new color palettes. There are tons of free color palettes online. Don’t believe me? Do a Google image search of “color palette.” When you find a palette you like, drag the image directly into your PowerPoint presentation. Next, select the “color fill” bucket, choose “More Colors …” and click on the eyedropper icon. With the eyedropper tool, you can select colors from your palette and use them for elements in your infographic.

Take the time to manipulate shapes. PowerPoint has an extensive library of shapes — including banners, ribbons, and arrows — that you can use in your infographic design. By clicking and dragging on the little yellow diamonds that appear on these shapes, you can customize them. For example, you can make the pointy ends of a ribbon longer or shorter, or make the body of an arrow thinner or thicker.

4) How to Create a Flowchart Infographic

Warning: Creating a flowchart-style infographic is not for the faint of heart.

While on the surface a flowchart infographic may appear simple and fun, a lot of thought and planning need to go into making sure the different sections flow into each other in a logical way.

In our flowchart PowerPoint template, we created a basic flowchart structure, with positive responses guiding viewers to a conclusion at the bottom left of the infographic and negative responses guiding viewers to a separate conclusion at the bottom right of the infographic.

The Flowchart Template

To ensure your flowchart infographic makes sense and is easy for viewers to navigate, follow these tips:

Draw out the branches beforehand. Before you dive into PowerPoint, get out a pen and paper and do a rough outline of your flowchart. Test for weaknesses in your logic by answering questions in every possible combination and seeing where you end up. For best results, have a friend or coworker run through the flowchart too.

The smaller the scope, the easier the execution. The more questions or stages you add to your flowchart, the more difficult it will be to create (and the harder it will likely be for viewers to understand). So try to narrow the focus of your flowchart.

5) How to Design an Image-Heavy Infographic

So far, the infographic templates we’ve looked at have relied primarily on illustrations that you can create within PowerPoint. But of course, there’s no reason why you can’t bring external photos and other images into your infographic design.

We’ve created this image-heavy infographic template for that exact purpose. It’s great for comparing different categories, ideas, or results, and since you don’t need to create or customize a lot of shapes, it’s a lot less work.

The Image Heavy Template

Here are some suggestions for ensuring your image-heavy infographic is easy on the eyes:

Use high-quality images. It’s better to scale down a big image (e.g. 2,000 pixels by 2,000 pixels) than to scale up a small image (e.g. 20 pixels by 20 pixels) in order to fit a particular space. The latter approach will result in images appearing pixelated and grainy.

Use borders. Adding borders to your images will help make them feel like their part of a cohesive design. In PowerPoint, you can control the size, style, and color of borders under the “Format Picture” tab.

Save your infographic as a PNG file. This is a best practice for all infographics, but is particularly relevant when publishing an infographic that contains photographs. The PNG extension offers better quality than other options. To save your finished infographic as a PNG file, you simply need to choose “File” > “Save As …” and select PNG from the dropdown.

Looking for precise specs for your Facebook cover photo? This handy cheat sheet from Spredfast has the answer to that and other social media photo details. The post Infographic: Optimal Image Sizes For All The Social Networks appeared first on Marketing Land.